Joshua Sur­tees

Cory Thomas, Trinidad's most suc­cess­ful com­ic book il­lus­tra­tor, is talk­ing to the T&T Guardian from his home in At­lanta, Geor­gia. It's a city that has be­come a vi­brant hub of cool Amer­i­ca with its hip hop scene pro­duc­ing artists like 2 Chainz, the New York Times call­ing it "hip-hop's cen­tre of grav­i­ty" and the no­to­ri­ous re­al­i­ty TV show Love and Hip Hop bring­ing lots of at­ten­tion to a city rapid­ly ex­pand­ing and sub­sum­ing the sub­ur­ban sprawl.

But Thomas doesn't see much of that."They call it Black Hol­ly­wood, but I'm most­ly home so I don't re­al­ly know," he chuck­les. "It's the best of both worlds I guess–a com­bi­na­tion of met­ro­pol­i­tan cities like New York with a south­ern, slow­er pace."Does he miss out on see­ing the grit and glam­our be­cause he's chained to his desk draw­ing com­ic strips?

"It's a com­bi­na­tion of that and me just be­ing a home­body," he laughs again. His soft-spo­ken shy­ness is pre­cise­ly what one would ex­pect of some­one im­mersed in the world of comics. While the term com­ic book nerd doesn't ex­act­ly ap­ply to Thomas, he cer­tain­ly gives the im­pres­sion of hap­pi­ly re­treat­ing in­to the fan­ta­sy car­toon world that his char­ac­ters oc­cu­py.

He's pro­duced a rich range of char­ac­ters to oc­cu­py those imag­i­nary worlds. His piece de re­sis­tance, Watch Your Head, ran for ten years in US news­pa­pers, farmed out via syn­di­ca­tion com­pa­nies. Now he's tak­en the se­ries on­line on his own Web site where the strips ap­pear twice a week, along with a full archive of the orig­i­nals.

Watch Your Head is the tale of five young col­lege stu­dents ("com­pos­ite char­ac­ters" of his friends) at a his­tor­i­cal­ly black uni­ver­si­ty, and their awk­ward ne­go­ti­a­tions with be­com­ing young adults on cam­pus. The three boys and two girls–of black, white, mixed and Lati­no eth­nic­i­ties–get them­selves tied up in failed ro­man­tic sit­u­a­tions, prat­falls, mis­un­der­stand­ings and hope­less­ly calami­tous at­tempts at stu­dent so­cial life.

One of the main char­ac­ters from the orig­i­nal strip is clear­ly part au­to­bi­o­graph­i­cal–his name is Cory: "a hy­per-ex­ag­ger­at­ed nerdy ver­sion of me"–a big-heart­ed young man who finds him­self per­pet­u­al­ly be­sot­ted with girls just out of his in big­ger, cool­er guy's arms at the school dance.More re­cent­ly, Thomas has linked up with best­selling nov­el­ist, James Pat­ter­son, and has il­lus­trat­ed his chil­dren's book Pub­lic School Su­per­hero.

This is Pat­ter­son's new di­rec­tion af­ter sell­ing over 300 mil­lion thrillers and ro­man­tic nov­els for adults and break­ing the world record for be­com­ing the first writer to sell over one mil­lion e-books.Thomas doesn't vis­it Trinidad that of­ten; he's not the peren­ni­al Car­ni­val­ist. All that ex­hi­bi­tion­ism just isn't his idea of a good time. And he doesn't ap­pear to have any plans to move back any time soon. He seems hap­py to be­come a per­ma­nent part of T&T's drip feed brain drain though he seems sur­prised to be told he has an Amer­i­can ac­cent.

"It's half and half re­al­ly," he protests. "See when I go back home, sur­round­ed by every­body, then my nat­ur­al Trinida­di­an ac­cent comes out."

His move to At­lanta–whose Caribbean com­mu­ni­ty, and in­deed food, can be found in a neigh­bour­ing sub­urb city called Stone Moun­tain–hap­pened when he got ac­cept­ed on a post­grad­u­ate de­gree course in il­lus­tra­tion and graph­ic de­sign at Sa­van­na Col­lege of Art and De­sign (Scad). Af­ter he'd com­plet­ed his un­der­grad­u­ate de­gree in me­chan­i­cal en­gi­neer­ing from Howard Uni­ver­si­ty in Wash­ing­ton DC in 2001 he re­alised that his child­hood dream of draw­ing com­ic strips was some­thing his tal­ent could turn in­to a re­al­i­ty.

The en­gi­neer­ing had been in­tend­ed for a ca­reer in oil and gas, but he was al­ready be­trothed to the draw­ing pen and the artists' sketch­pad.

Back in Trinidad in his school days, Thomas' fa­ther, a po­lice­man, would come home af­ter long shifts with com­ic books for the young Thomas to read. He used these as in­spi­ra­tion to im­i­tate the styles and make his own com­ic cre­ations for his friends in class at Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do.

Bat­man is his favourite com­ic se­ries, but his days of col­lect­ing back is­sues are over now; his mum cleared out his old copies a long time ago but he still finds him­self por­ing over the on­line fo­rums and mes­sage boards like an ob­ses­sive.

"I'm not re­al­ly sen­ti­men­tal about that [phys­i­cal] stuff," he says of his now de­part­ed col­lec­tion. "If I want to read or buy some­thing I'll get a dig­i­tal copy. There's a com­ic store five min­utes from my house but I've nev­er even been there. I just down­load them and delete them when I'm done with them."

An­oth­er sta­tis­tic of the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion, Thomas is com­plete­ly bought in­to the tech­no­log­i­cal age (al­though he does hang on to mu­sic tapes and CDs from the 90s). DC and Mar­vel copies have on­line ver­sions and sub­scrip­tions, he says. You can even ac­cess them for free if you know where to look, like all il­le­gal file shar­ing pira­cy.

"Grow­ing up in Trinidad we had all the Amer­i­can stuff and all the best of the Eu­ro­pean like Tintin and As­ter­ix.So my dad would bring home any­thing he thought I would like and even­tu­al­ly when I got my own mon­ey I start­ed buy­ing my own."But what Trinidad lacked was ded­i­cat­ed com­ic stores. In­stead they had their own sec­tions in book­shops and drugs stores. Per­haps slight­ly less ro­man­tic for en­thu­si­asts but just as ex­cit­ing for kids.

On his web­site, seethomas.com, he ex­plains how as a child he "sub­sti­tut­ed com­ic books for friends and quick­ly be­came one of the pre-em­i­nent six-year-olds in my field with the in­tro­duc­tion of my ground-break­ing Comet Cat com­ic se­ries."There were oth­er an­thro­po­mor­phic char­ac­ters like Mi­cro Mouse which Thomas would draw in pan­els, rip­ping out the cen­tre pages of his school ex­er­cise books.

But with just six or sev­en oth­er class­mates who were in­to com­ic books, Thomas wasn't reach­ing the kind of au­di­ence he would lat­er achieve."My par­ents en­cour­aged me to draw. They bought me sup­plies and if I need­ed more I would ask them for it. They didn't re­al­ly care what I was draw­ing but they en­cour­aged the tal­ent," Thomas says.

And al­though his art teach­ers sup­port­ed him, Thomas says it was nev­er pre­sent­ed to him as a pro­fes­sion­al pos­si­bil­i­ty, more of a "fun hob­by. Some­thing you do on the side. Grow­ing up in Trinidad no­body's telling you to be­come an il­lus­tra­tor, you wan­na be a doc­tor or lawyer or en­gi­neer."The re­al­i­sa­tion that he could make a liv­ing from draw­ing and reach a siz­able au­di­ence came at Howard at the school news­pa­per.

"They want­ed some­one who could do ed­i­to­r­i­al car­toons and stuff like that."It be­came pop­u­lar and, with a friend's en­cour­age­ment, he be­gan com­pil­ing a port­fo­lio and sent them out to the syn­di­cates to get wider cir­cu­la­tion and have his work in mul­ti­ple news­pa­pers. At his peak he was ap­pear­ing in the Wash­ing­ton Post, Chica­go Tri­bune and Boston Globe as well as small­er re­gion­al pa­pers.

Now he has stopped do­ing news­pa­per work and sees the way for­ward as chil­dren's il­lus­tra­tions.The amount of time one in­vests in draw­ings is time bet­ter spent on pub­li­ca­tions than on dai­ly sketch­es.I ask how long it takes him to draw strips and he laughs.

"For me it takes longer than most," he says. "If you look at a lot of comics they're how I start­ed out–less de­tails, more sim­plis­tic–mean­while I think I use a more de­tailed style, dif­fer­ent cam­era an­gles it takes more brain­storm­ing rather than just like a Dil­bert of four pan­els with char­ac­ters look­ing at each oth­er. It takes me about a day."

Per­haps an el­e­ment of mov­ing out of na­tion­al news­pa­pers is the prob­lem with es­tab­lish­ing the kind of fame and recog­ni­tion when the long-stand­ing strips nev­er change.Peanuts, Doones­bury, Den­nis the Men­ace and Blondie are all still go­ing in the US. Andy Capp, Fred Bas­sett, Ha­gar the Hor­ri­ble are still go­ing in the UK.

"That's a ma­jor con­ver­sa­tion here," says Thomas. "Blondie start­ed in 1950-some­thing. The orig­i­nal cre­ators some­times die and the chil­dren car­ry it on so peo­ple ask is their room for new peo­ple with fresh­er ideas. It was hard for me and it's hard for new­com­ers now with all of these lega­cy comics clog­ging up the space."

He puts it down to the old­er de­mo­graph­ic of news­pa­per read­ers to whom ed­i­tors try to cater for their tastes. The lack of black faces in com­ic books and su­per­hero se­ries is an­oth­er thing Thomas and oth­er black and Lati­no artists re­cent­ly protest­ed."I was straight up told that cer­tain ed­i­tors wouldn't want black char­ac­ters be­cause there aren't black peo­ple in their de­mo­graph­ic."

But Thomas isn't look­ing back. The fu­ture is an ex­cit­ing place. He's cur­rent­ly work­ing with the pub­lish­ers of Pat­ter­son's chil­dren's books to make his own orig­i­nal idea.And he's tak­en con­trol of the dig­i­tal mod­el with Watch Your Head."There's more con­trol over who reads it. I can sell mer­chan­dise. There's di­rect in­ter­ac­tion with my au­di­ence. News­pa­pers put it out there and hope for the best but this way I get an au­di­ence that's more en­thu­si­as­tic."